Six-City Survey: Twelve-Month Run of Increased Rates Comes to End

With the help of Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group and Michael Meyer of Rate-Highway Inc., we are conducting rate surveys on a weekly basis and providing analysis and comments where appropriate. We publish this monthly recap in our electronic edition and more comprehensive looks in the print editions.

Click graphs for larger view.

After 12 months of year-over-year rate quotes increases (except April that was essentially flat), the November 2013 average was $4.39 lower than a year ago. The double digit increases that we saw for a few months were unsustainable, so this is not surprising.

But it’s worth noting that the November 2013 average was $2.26 higher than the November 2011 average of $36.97. The graph below shows all three years — from the time we started surveying rate quotes in May 2011.

The individual cities were not consistent. Chicago went from a November 2012 average of $67.84 (by far the highest of the six cities) to a second-lowest average of $29.95 in November 2013. Miami and Houston rates are up almost $16 each while the other cities are all down.

Rate data provided by Rate-Highway, a leading provider of revenue management services for the auto rental industry. Rates are an average of aggregator/OTA rates for all vendors present in the markets listed on the date of the survey. These tables and graph show the average of all base rate quotes per day for an ICAR at the six airports shown, for arrivals 15 to 21 days ahead of the date of the survey, for two- and seven-day rentals.